Back in August this blog ran a piece on IPXI based on an interview I did with its CEO Gerard Pannekoek. IPXI aims to be a forum for trading IP licences, based on the model established by the Chicago Climate Exchange, which Pannekoek helped to get off the ground a few years back.

IPXI has been on my radar screen since last year. I have monitored its slow progress this year and have been waiting for the launch date to be announced - as have many others no doubt. In August Pannekoek told me that we should expect the names of the first companies to sign up as members to be made public by Labor Day and, at the very latest, by mid-September. However, that deadline came and went, and there was no news. So I emailed Pannekoek to ask him where things stood. This is the response I got:

We continue to make significant progress with potential Founding Members and we remain excited about the progress of building the community and corporate foundation for the Exchange. The limiting factor now is the corporate approval process which moves uniquely within each organization and is unfortunately not something that we are able to accelerate beyond normal course.

While these approval processes progress, we continue to work with newly interested corporations as well as with global patent offices and NGO's for support activities related to the Exchange. As promised in our last telephone conversation, I will release further details as soon as they become available. 

The moral of the story here is that you cannot rush corporations. However excited they may sound and however keen they may tell you are to get involved, there are still processes to go through and internal debates to be had. I am also guessing that it is probably the case that IPXI is not the number one thing to look at on any corporate priority list right now. IPXI remains a great idea which has the potential to bring some much needed transparency to the patent transactions market. But I am not going to hold my breath waiting for it to start trading. It must be terribly frustrating for Pannekoek and his team - though obviously they are never going to say that!

Hope for this year, prepare for next is the way that I now see it. But whether I am right or wrong, you can rest assured that when there is some news to report, you will be able to read it here.

Sectors

Licensing, Patents, IP business, IP valuation

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